“It can be hard to put into words until you actually see one up close,” Alock said, as his custom-built boat bobs in the choppy ocean waters.

Like most days this year, his boat is full of passengers — none of whom are showing outward signs of sea-sickness.

“It seems to captivate a lot of people,” he said. “I guess ever since the movie “Titanic,” too, it’s drawn more interest around icebergs and I think it’s one of the major icons for people to come and see when they come to Newfoundland.”

While viewing icebergs from a boat might not be as exotic as a helicopter fly-over, the folks travelling on Alcoks boat share a powerful sense of awe.

“It’s amazing to see it in person — the colours, the immensity” says Rick Rottman, from Washington state.

“It’s the purity, I think.”Nova Scotian Gundi Pieper said.

That purity is now being marketed like never before, notably in Iceberg Vodka — which has been around for a few years — and more recently in Iceberg Beer, bottled by the Quidi Vidi Brewing Company, in the provincial capital of St. John’s.

In the culture of adult beverages, it seems icebergs are a multi-purpose ingredient.

The mayor of St. Anthony, Ernest Simms, beams with pride as he explains “You can actually get two shots of rum on one ice cube, with iceberg ice.”

“It doesn’t melt at all. It’s so dense, that it doesn’t,” he said.

Of course the glaciers where icebergs originate do crack.

The Canadian Coast Guard suspects many of the bergs visible this year are remnants of the giant iceberg, 260 square kilometres, that broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier three years ago — the largest Arctic iceberg to calve since 1962.

Whether the Petermann event is related to global warming is a matter of opinion.

The environmental activist group, Greenpeace, believes it is at least part of a pattern of global warming.

But Coast Guard officials are non-committal, when it comes to that line of reasoning.